iBUYPOWER Erebus GT Gaming System Review

Article Index

Metro 2033 and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

Next up for in-game performance testing, we have Metro 2033 and S.T.A.L.K.E.R., both of which are absolute murder on graphics cards in terms of workload but also boast impressive cutting-edge visuals.

Metro 2033

DX11 Gaming Performance

Metro 2033 is your basic post-apocalyptic first person shooter game with a few rather unconventional twists. Unlike most FPS titles, there is no health meter to measure your level of ailment, but rather you’re left to deal with life, or lack there-of more akin to the real world with blood spatter on your visor and your heart rate and respiration level as indicators. The game is loosely based on a novel by Russian Author Dmitry Glukhovsky. Metro 2003 boasts some of the best 3D visuals on the PC platform currently including a DX11 rendering mode that makes use of advanced depth of field effects and character model tessellation for increased realism.

Once again, we see an important difference between the Erebus GT and our reference systems, which is that the former delivers more-than-playable framerates at all tested resolutions, while the rest struggle. Only the HP system really offers strong framerates at 1024x768; at the same resolution, the other two rigs are borderline.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Call of Pripyat

DX11 Gaming Performance

Call of Pripyat is the third game in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series and throws in DX11 to the mix. This benchmark is based on one of the locations found within the latest game. Testing includes four stages and utilizes various weather conditions, as well as different time of day settings. It offers a number of presets and options, including multiple versions of DirectX, resolutions, antialiasing, etc. SunShafts represents the most graphically challenging stage available. We conducted our testing with DX11 enabled, multiple resolutions, and Ultra settings.

The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. scores are less dramatic than the Metro 2033 scores, but the trend remains the same: the Erebus GT can handle any of our games at our tested resolutions without even breaking a sweat, while gamers using the other systems will have to accept lower resolutions to achieve desired framerates. That’s a luxury that plenty of folks would gladly pay for.